


Baz Pitch, Nandos, and a Way Out

by angelsfalling16



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, First Kiss, Foster Care, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Book 1: Carry On, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24956500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsfalling16/pseuds/angelsfalling16
Summary: Baz shows up at the care home where Simon is  staying one day, and when Simon refuses to go with him, Baz keeps returning every day until he agrees to go or at least take some foods.Remix of manicmagicat's London Calling
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 15
Kudos: 160
Collections: Carry On Remix





	Baz Pitch, Nandos, and a Way Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [manicmagicat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/manicmagicat/gifts).



> I had a lot of fun remixing this fic and writing it from Simon's pov. It was interesting to get to play around with this idea. Thank you manicmagicat for allowing me to remix it!
> 
> I also have to give a big thank you to @caitybug because without her, I would not have been able to finish this fic on time. From helping me figure out what to do to reading over it for me and helping me figure out a title, her help has been indispensable.

**Simon**

When Baz first shows up at the care home, I swear I am hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time. Sometimes during the summers, I get so hungry and dizzy I start imagining things that aren’t there. It isn’t usually Baz, though.

So, when he pulls up in front of the home, looking so completely out of his element in his nice car and nice clothes and looking like he obviously doesn’t belong on this side of town, I think that I have finally lost it. If I’m imagining my evil roommate, something must be seriously wrong with me.

When he calls my name, I startle, looking up from the rocks I’ve been chucking at the ground and watching break into smaller pieces. No one ever says my name around here. The other boys tend to steer clear of me after the first couple of weeks once they realize I have a short fuse and am not typically inclined to back down from a flight.

It’s when I hear my name that I know something bad is going to happen, and when I see Baz through the car window, I know that I’m right.

Glancing around, it doesn’t seem as though any of the other boys have taken particular notice of Baz’s presence, and I’m slightly relieved. Getting singled out around here means risking the renewed negative attention of the other boys. I’ve never had to worry about that before because no one has ever tried to come find me, which leads me to the question of why Baz is here.

I slowly get to my feet, feeling a little wobbly, before stumbling over to his car, practically leaning on it to hold me up as I peer in through the window.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Baz?” I hiss at him. “Why the fuck would you think it was a good idea to drive a Jaguar up to place like this?”

He stares at me for a moment before saying, “Get in the car, Snow.”

I frown at him, wondering if he’s completely lost it since the last time I saw him.

“Why would I do that? So that you can kill me? Drive us off a cliff, perhaps?”

“If I drive us off a cliff, we would both die. I obviously have better self-preservation skills than you do, so I wouldn’t even think to do something so idiotic.”

Hearing Baz’s familiar snark is almost comforting. For a brief moment, I don’t feel so alone or out of touch with the World of Mages. Still, I know better than to trust him. Who knows what the Old Families might have sent him here to do to me?

“Look, Snow, don’t cause a scene.” His voice is softer when he speaks this time, and his sudden change in tone is only more unsettling than him being here. “I will bring you back before whatever your curfew is.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I growl.

I don’t fancy being in the care home, but it sure beats dying at the hands of Baz Pitch and his twisted, dark family.

Baz looks like he wants to argue with me some more, but then he just shakes his head.

“Fine, Snow. Stay where you are. It looks like you were having a great time. I see why you want to stay.” He pauses for the briefest of moments before saying, “I’ll be back tomorrow.” Then, he rolls up the window and drives away before I have a chance to respond. Before I can tell him not to bother coming back.

I stand there stunned, staring after him for a long moment, before I turn and kick my way back to the steps that I had been sitting on before he showed up. The other boys keep looking over at me, but they stay away because they can probably feel the anger rolling off of me.

I’m angry at Baz for coming here. I’m angry at thim for reminding me of all of the things that I try so hard to forget over the summers. And I’m angry at the Mage for dropping me here after what happened with the Humdrum at the end of the term.

But mostly, I’m angry at myself for how much I wanted to get in the car and go with Baz.

***

I’m surprised when Baz really does return the next day. And the next.

Both days are the same as the first. He pulls up, tells me to get in the car, I refuse, and he leaves again.

I don’t know why he keeps coming back. If he wanted to kill me, he could just do it. No one would stop him, and I doubt anyone would even care. I would just be one less person in this home, so I think people might even be glad if Baz were to take me out.

But he has barely made a move on me so far, which makes me wonder if he needs me alive instead of dead. Maybe the Families want to torture me for information on the Mage, so they sent Baz here to try to get me to go willingly.

I won’t let that happen. No matter how desperate I am to leave this place. Although, I am also tempted to go with him simply to see what his plan is, to figure out what he and his family are plotting now.

***

On the fourth day, Baz brings food, and I can smell it through the window even before I get close enough to see the brown paper bag. The smell of melted cheese has my stomach grumbling embarrassingly, and I hope Baz doesn’t notice.

He tells me to get in the car, but I shake my head. It’s going to take a lot more than a bit of food to make me go anywhere with him.

“Just take the food then,” he says, and I know he notices me eyeing the bag hungrily. “you don’t have to come with me. I would rather not have to watch you eat anyway. It’s revolting.”

I level a glare at him, trying to stay strong despite the fact that I feel ravenous.

“So, the Old Families have been reduced to poisoning cheese toasties now? Surely, they can be more creative than that.” I don’t even have to see the food to know what it is. The smell of perfectly toasted bread and cheese has my mouth watering so much that I’m practically drooling. I’m tempted to just grab the bag and run.

“They aren’t poisoned. If I wanted to kill you, I could have done it by now. It wouldn’t be hard now that I know where you are. Just take the bloody food.”

I want to. I don’t think he has any idea just how much I want to take the food. But I can’t. I don’t want to risk it. I don’t want him to think that I’m giving in.

I cross my arms to keep myself from taking the food anyway and jut out my chin stubbornly. I don’t need Baz’s charity, if that’s even what this is. I have survived every other summer without him and his offerings of food. I can do it this time, too.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says, and I want to tell him to just fuck off, but if I’m being honest, in a way, I am looking forward to seeing him again.

His presence here, however short of a time it’s for, breaks the dreadful, monotony of this place. His face isn’t as harsh as the ones of the other boys that I’m stuck here with, and he doesn’t seem intent on beating the shit out of me simply for existing. At least, right now he doesn’t, and I will take what I can get.

***

Baz brings food again the next day, but I hold out with the little strength that I have left in me. The day after that, though, I’m just so tired that I don’t even attempt to fight him. I just want to eat something that’s fresh and doesn’t seem like someone’s leftover scraps.

I don’t say a word to Baz when he pulls up. I just take the proffered food and retreat to a corner away from the others, not even bothering to check whether Baz leaves. I scarf down the cheese toasties in less than two minutes and am pleasantly surprised to find a scone in the bag as well. It’s not even one of those day-old raisin ones that we are given here at the homes. It’s a fresh, sour cherry one. My favorite.

I probably should be worried that the food might be poisoned, but at this point, I don’t even care. Poisoned food is better than no food when you’re starving the way that I am.

***

The next day when Baz pulls up, he doesn’t have any food with him, and I hate how disappointed I am by that. I hate how much I was looking forward to it. The lack of food has to be the reason that I end up agreeing to go with him this time. There is no other reason that I would willingly get into a car with Baz.

He starts talking as soon as I reach the car.

“Please come with me.”

His words are a surprise. Every other day this week, he has only demanded that I get in the car, but today it’s like he’s pleading with me to do it.

“Come on, Snow. I’ll cast a spell. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

I hesitate for a moment. I shouldn’t want to go, but I do want to. Even though it’s with Baz, I want to go just to get away from the care home, just for a little bit. (A part of me wants to go  _ because _ it’s Baz, but I decidedly don’t think about that.)

I get in the car, and keeping to his word, Baz swears that he won’t hurt me and casts  **_“An Englishman’s word is his bond.”_ **

As I feel his magic wash over me, the first bit of magic that I have felt in weeks, I start to relax, and I have to force myself to remember to keep my wits about me. I can’t suddenly start trusting Baz.

“So, where do you want to eat, Snow?”

“What?” I ask, confused and wondering if I missed something.

“Food, Snow,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “That thing you are constantly shoveling into your mouth. Where would you like to get it?”

I clench my jaw and just stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out what his play is here. He is basically my kidnapper at this point, and I’m pretty sure the kidnapper is supposed to be making all of the choices, not the hostage.

Maybe this was his plan all along: to reel me in with food and magic. He said that  _ he _ wouldn’t hurt me. He never said anything about his family.

But he’s looking at me expectantly, and I have no idea what’s going on.

“Why are you doing this, Baz?”

He sighs and tears a hand through his hair, looking away from me and out at something outside. There’s obviously something on his mind.

“Look, Snow, do you honestly want to have this conversation when you’re hungry?”

I think about that for a moment before finally relenting. I may as well get some food out of this whole situation.

I nod. “Let’s go to Nando’s.”

Once we’re there and we’ve gotten some food, Baz suddenly seems to be full of questions.

“Snow,” he begins, and he says it like a sigh, like even just my name exasperates him. “What are you doing in that home? Why aren’t you with the Mage?”

“Why should I tell you that?” I ask him. “You keep everything from me. I don’t even know how you found me or why you’re here.”

He looks at me pensively before saying, “My aunt was the one who found you. I have no idea how, so don’t ask me. I don’t really want to know how she gets any of her information. But she sent me here to spy on you.”

“Great,” I say, clenching my hand into a fist. “So you’ve been reporting back to them about everything this whole time?” I guess I was right. Baz has been plotting something. I just don’t know what. “What’s your plan now? Did you bring me here to torture information out of me or something?”

“I’m not exactly torturing you right now, am I? And if you think Nando’s is torture, that’s on you and your terrible taste in restaurants. You chose this place.”

He has a small point, I will admit, but I’m still not letting him off the hook.

“Besides,” he continues, “I haven’t reported anything back to anyone. I haven’t spoken to Fiona since that first day when she sent me here, and my parents think I’ve been hanging out with Dev and Niall every day this week.”

“Why should I believe you?” I ask. I have no reason to believe Baz, and the more he talks, the more it all just sounds like lies. “How do I know that this isn’t all part of your plot to lure me in and take me to your secret lair? To catch me off guard so that you can kill me? That seems like your style.”

“I am hardly going to bring a war down on your head right now. Not that it would even take that much effort right now anyway. You look even more pathetic than you normally do. And you know that I plan to kill you personally. There is no way that I would let the Families get in my way. And how secret would my lair be if I brought the likes of you there?”

He pauses and sighs, not meeting my eyes when he starts to speak again. His tone changes, and I’m not sure what it means.

“Why would I have wasted all of this time just to kill you in the end? I can actually control my powers, unlike you. I could have set you alight as soon as I found you.”

I don’t know what to think. Why else would he be here? Why would he keep coming back and trying to bring me food? There is no plausible explanation for why he’s acting like this.

“If you’re not here to kill me, then why are you here? It’s not like you care about me.”

Right? Baz doesn’t care about anyone but himself and his family. He absolutely does not care about me.

“You know Fiona. She thinks everything is a plot.” He twists his mouth into a bitter frown before adding, “Bit like you in that way. I knew how you always looked when you returned at the beginning of the term, but I always thought that you had just spent the summer deep in the woods killing goblins or something and that’s why you hadn’t been eating properly. I had no idea that the Mage was just leaving you like – like this.”

He pauses to take in a breath, and I’m surprised by the emotionI see on his face. Why does he care what happens to me?

“For Merlin’s sake, he takes all those taxes from us. The least he could do is let kids who don’t have a place to go stay at Watford over the summer. I mean, you’re the Chosen One, the Mage’s heir. You’re practically  _ his _ kid!”

I’ve never seen Baz get so worked up about stuff like this. He usually only gets this way when he’s yelling at me for something that he thinks I’ve done to wrong him. He finally looks up to meet my eyes again, and there is something there in his expression, something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. I’m not sure what exactly it is, but it’s new and surprisingly un-Baz like

“Not everything is a plot, Snow,” Baz says, his tone softer than before. “I didn’t know how bad it was for you, and when I saw the truth, I wasn’t about to leave you like that.”

I’m a little stunned when he stops talking, unsure what I’m feeling or why Baz is so interested in whether I’m being taken care of during the summers. Is he just wanting to make sure that I survive for another school year of being tormented by him?

I shrug, both to myself and in response to Baz. “The Mage isn’t doing it to be cruel. He leaves me with the Normals so I can stay close to the language and stay sharp.”

“Stay sharp?” He sounds as disgusted as if I had just told him that I had spilled tea on his blazer. (Which I did once. Right before he banned me from drinking tea in our room ever again.) “You are not a sword, Simon. You’re a child. He is willing to use you as a weapon but won’t even make sure that you’re being fed. You’re a person, Snow. Even though you’re not a particularly skilled or articulate one, you still deserve to be treated like a fucking human.”

That’s rich coming from him. Since when has Baz ever treated me like a person? From the moment we met, he treated me like a bothersome creature that he was stuck with. He couldn’t get rid of me, so he just treated me as poorly as possible to make sure that I didn’t want to be there.

I can feel the anger building up in me, but rather than go off, I push the feeling into my words.

“What would you know about how I should be treated? You’re not even human. And what about the way that you’ve been treating me for the past seven years? Is that how a person is meant to be treated?” My voice shakes as I talk, and it takes me a moment to realize that I’m crying. I can’t stop them now, not after I’ve let all of this loose.

Maybe Baz is right, and the way the Mage is treating me isn’t right. But I don’t know anything better than that. All I know is being here in the summers, fighting with boys who want to be here at least as little as I do, and then being at Watford, fighting with Baz who doesn’t want me around.

All I have ever known is being unwanted.

Baz reaches out to rest his hand over mine, which is resting on the table. My magic feels like it’s going to bubble out of me and take this whole building down, but for some reason, his touch steadies me. It brings me back into this moment where for some bizarre reason, Baz seems to care about me.

“I don’t treat you like a person? Who do you think has been checking up on you and bringing you food, making sure that you’re safe at that place? I know that I am cruel to you a lot of the time, but it is the only way that I know how to survive when I’m around you.”

“Why?” Why is he so cruel to me? What is it about me that makes him act like that?

I can see him hesitate, obviously not wanting to say whatever it is, but then he nods once and says it.

“Because I’m in love with you.”

He pulls his hand away from me and looks away from me.

I sit there, floundering for a moment. I want to call him a liar, to hit him for almost making me believe him. But I know Baz too well. He isn’t lying. Not about this.

He still isn’t looking at me, though. His eyes are shut tight, like he’s bracing for something. He probably thinks that I’m going to hit him. But I’m not.

I don’t know what I’m feeling in this moment, but it isn’t anger.

Baz Pitch is in love with me, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I would like to try to figure it out. Not here, though.

I start cleaning up the table, sweeping our trash onto trays, and when I stand to leave, Baz follows me, unlocking the car to allow us to get in.

London Calling is playing through the car speakers, and I let the sound of The Clash drown out everything for a minute while I try to figure out what to say.

What does this mean? Does it mean anything?

Just because Baz is in love with me, it doesn’t mean that he wants anything to do with me. Maybe he just feels guilty about where I live during the summers. It doesn’t mean that he wants to do something about it, doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly going to start being nice to me all of a sudden.

I take in a deep, shaky breath, the tears having all dried up at this point, and I ask him the thing that I feel is most important at this moment.

“Are you taking me back to the home? Will you keep coming to see me?” I hate wondering about that. I hate that in just a week, I’ve grown so used to seeing him that it would physically hurt for him to stop.

“I don’t want to take you back there, Snow.”

His voice is quiet but sure, and it stirs something up in me. My heart does this weird little flip simply because Baz doesn’t want me in that place anymore than I want to be there, and it feels a bit ridiculous. But it also feels good, to know that maybe, just maybe, there is someone in the world who cares about what happens to me.

I turn fully in my seat to face him, taking in his earnest expression as I lean a little closer to him.

I don’t want to go back there either but, “I haven’t got anywhere else to go.”

“Come with me to Hampshire, Simon.” He whispers it, but I know that he means it.

He actually wants me to go with him. And I want that, too. I want to be wherever Baz is, however strange that is for me to realize.

“Okay,” I whisper back.

And then I kiss him.

Because, oh, I think I might love him, too.

Despite everything that we have been through – or maybe because of it – I fell for Baz, and the thought of us parting ways after this, hurts too much to think about.

He brings his hand up to cup my cheek, brushing his thumb along my cheekbone, and that one touch means so much.

Baz has never touched me like this. He always touches with the aim to hurt, but this—. This touch is almost reverent, and it makes me feel like I’m something special. I’m not just some lost kid.

When I’m with Baz, I feel like I have a place to belong, and I never want to lose that. I never want him to let me go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! <3
> 
> Be sure to check out manicmagicat's original fic. And come find me on Tumblr: @angelsfalling16


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